Rudd Takes Wind Out Of Abbott's Sails, May Even Stop Boats

If posed as a logic puzzle, Kevin Rudd's solution to Australia's problem of boat people is brilliant. Under this scheme, no asylum seeker who comes to Australia by boat without a visa will ever be able to settle in Australia. They will instead be sent to Papua New Guinea (PNG) for processing, and resettled there. That's that.

Why is this solution at least theoretically brilliant?

There are two groups of people scrambling onto rickety boats to come to Australia, putting their own lives at risk and creating feelings of guilt among humanitarian Australians.

There are the people persecuted in their home countries and whose lives are in danger, who desperately need to flee their countries just to stay alive. They're generally acknowledged to be genuine refugees. There are international laws to safeguard their rights, and as a signatory to those international laws, Australia is duty-bound to accept a certain proportion of them. It would be unconscionable to turn them away.

Then there are the people who are in no danger of persecution or death in their home countries, but who perceive a chance of a better life abroad. These people are commonly called "economic migrants". There is no international law that recognises their aspirations as a fundamental human right, and no obligation on any country's part to indulge their dreams. Any migration arrangement has to be transactional and mutually beneficial, such as Australia's Skilled Migration program.

The whole problem is trying to weed out economic migrants from the hordes of people turning up in boats at Australian shores, so that genuine refugees may be considered. The problem is popularly termed "queue-jumping", but it's more basic than that. It's not that some deserving people are being served out of turn, ahead of other deserving people. It's that undeserving people are being served in the first place.

What Kevin Rudd's solution has done is change the rules of the game so genuine asylum seekers select themselves, and mere economic migrants select themselves out. As a shibboleth, it's brilliant.

What do refugees want? Safety, wherever they can find it.

What do economic migrants want? The opportunity to live in a developed country (not in a less developed one).

Let's face it, out of the world's 7 billion people, at least 6 billion would jump at the chance to live in Australia, including many from the so-called First World. Australia is far and away the best place in the world to live, bar none. And so Australia's international commitment to accept refugees has become "sugar on the table" that attracts hordes of others who face no danger or persecution in their home countries, but who simply think it would be a great idea to resettle in this paradise and don't mind the risks of a boat journey. The number of Sinhalese (not Tamil) asylum seekers is an example of this, because Sinhalese are the dominant group in Sri Lanka and face no persecution there.

As long as an Australian visa was seen as the only way to grant safety to refugees, there was no way to distinguish between the two groups of asylum seekers. But by offering safety in a third country and simultaneously ruling out the possibility of living in Australia, a wedge has been neatly driven between these two groups. The genuine refugees will still arrive, and will receive the safety from persecution that they crave and deserve. The economic migrants will have to turn away from the boats and explore other options, because their objectives will no longer be met.

While the scheme is brilliant as an abstract logical problem, I have some concerns about it in practice.

1. From Australia's point of view, the deal with PNG should have been locked in for at least 5 years. Making it renewable every year not only gives PNG too much negotiating advantage, the uncertainty it generates will keep the people-smugglers in business by letting them play on the hopes of economic migrants.

2. From PNG's point of view, this scheme sows the seeds of future ethnic strife. Australia is doing to PNG what the British did to Fiji by importing Indian labour into the island. The tensions between ethnic Fijians and Indians continues to this day, and it doesn't take too much imagination to see what would happen when PNG natives interact more frequently with, and compete with, people from Afghanistan, Iran and elsewhere. I don't know if PNG has really thought this through.

3. Getting other countries in the region to "share Australia's burden" is a great idea, but while Indonesia is a good candidate as a destination country, New Zealand is not. NZ is like Australia in its attractiveness to economic migrants. Adding New Zealand to the list of countries that agree to resettle boat people "puts the sugar back on the table".

Whether Rudd's scheme will succeed in stopping the boats remains to be seen. But I'm fairly certain it has torpedoed Abbott's election campaign. And that is unbridled goodness.

Will The Bull Turn?

After almost 3 years to the day that he was deposed by his deputy Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd had the satisfaction of deposing her back (if that's a phrase) to reclaim his crown. That was the Aussie soap opera's latest twist before the coming high drama that is the 2013 federal election.

"Damn, that felt good!"

Like any good soap opera, this one too has been a roller-coaster experience for its audience.

I started off preferring Kevin Rudd to John Howard in the 2007 election. (I mean, who wouldn't?)

But after the election, and through the early part of 2010, I developed an even better opinion of his very capable deputy, Julia Gillard.

But in 2010, I was sorry to see Rudd betrayed by that same deputy, and I was more than a little angry with Gillard.

The twists continued. As revelations gradually emerged of Rudd's impossible nature and his general flakiness, I began to see that she had had little choice. The party had to replace Rudd before his shenanigans became public knowledge and he became a liability for Labor.

And now that Gillard has been deposed by Rudd, I once again feel sorry for the one who lost.

Throughout the entire drama, Abbott the try-hard, Abbott the consistently negative, Abbott the guy without a single positive idea of his own, has been hyperactive, desperately trying to convince the electorate that he stands for something other than his own irrelevant ambition. Whatever I might feel about Labor, Abbott's constant scum-like behaviour has ensured that they never get my absolute contempt. That prize belongs to him alone.

A charitable view of Tony Abbott's brain

I feel sorry for Julia Gillard. I believe she didn't get a fair shake of the sauce bottle after all. With Rudd on the inside and Abbott on the outside constantly keeping her off-balance, she never really got a chance to govern.

Stymied by the unholy alliance of Lex Luthor and Mr Mxyzsptlk

It'll be interesting to see what comes next. The pollsters have been predicting a walk-over for Abbott in September with Gillard leading Labor. But with Rudd back in charge, the odds have been evened. Is it the Coalition's turn to panic? I'm sure internal polling shows Malcolm Turnbull far more popular than Tony Abbott. When facing Gillard and the prospect of a certain victory, there was no incentive for the Liberals to change horses midstream. All they had to do was stay the course. But Rudd's return should have changed all those calculations. Now they really have to consider Malcolm Turnbull again. Abbott deposed Turnbull in 2009, but if it looks like he can't deliver the goods, perhaps the Liberals need a similar counter-coup.

He doesn't half want a thick ear, the blighter. Biff him one, Malcolm!

(With apologies to James Joyce)

My preferences for PM:

1. Malcolm Turnbull (Liberal)
2. Julia Gillard (Labor)
3. Kevin Rudd (Labor)
...
98. Any of the giraffes from Taronga zoo (Independent)
99. Tony Abbott (Liberal)

Does Turnbull have the intestinal fortitude to challenge Abbott to a rematch for the leadership of the Liberals? This will be a crucial test of his character. Turnbull, unlike Rudd, has lain low and licked his wounds in silence, making no effort to challenge his leader. He faces the danger that if he fails to grasp this opportunity, he may well go into oblivion the way that other promising but hesitant Liberal star went (Peter Costello).

Why John Howard never had to fear being stabbed in his backbone

Will the worm turn?

Update 02/07/2013: Malcolm Turnbull fires a shot across the bow of Tony Abbott. And man, what a shot! Dare I hope he's preparing for a challenge?

Labor's Leadership Woes

Will he, won't he? Australian media is full of speculation about whether Kevin Rudd will challenge Julia Gillard for the leadership of the Labor party (and the Prime Ministership).

My thoughts in brief:

1. I don't like Labor's habit of switching horses midstream every time an opinion poll shows them slipping. For goodness sake, grow a spine, people! As a voter, I want politicians to be sensitive to my opinions and all that, but I also respect a party that doesn't quiver every time I frown. [That's in the spirit of Groucho Marx ("I wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member.")]

2. Greens Leader Bob Brown may have a point that Gillard is copping it extra hard because she's a woman. I've independently discovered, to my surprise, that there is a fair amount of sexism in Australia in spite of the country's superficial egalitarianism. I think Gillard needs a bit more time and bit more space simply because she deserves a fair go, quite apart from the need to avoid switching horses midstream.

3. On the other hand, maybe it's good for Gillard to learn that what goes around comes around. Poor opinion polls helped her oust Rudd in June 2010. Now we're back in a similar situation. So what's sauce for the gander is sauce for the goose, isn't it? How do you like your irony served, Madame Prime Minister?

4. Meanwhile, on the despicable side of the fence (on second thoughts, make that "utterly despicable"), Tony Abbott is crowing about Labor's leadership crisis. Now where is the Liberal leadership challenge when we need one? If Abbott is sent packing into the political wilderness, it won't be too soon for me. Malcolm Turnbull, step up please.

Australian Election 2010, and What It Means

I must say I expected something like this. In fact, a hung parliament with Labor slightly ahead of the Liberals reflects my feelings exactly. It's nice to know the entire country feels the way I do :-).

I daresay we wouldn't be in this situation if we had Peter Costello leading the Liberals. It would have been a slam dunk. Instead, we have the aptly named religious nut Tony Abbott in charge. Call me what you will but I refuse to vote for a politician whose policy manual is religious scripture (and it doesn't matter what religion we're talking about). Abbott has been considered unelectable for a reason, and that is now clear in these results.

At the same time, there's tremendous anger against Labor, and Julia Gillard by extension, for what was done to Kevin Rudd. They were punished for their backstabbery by the loss of 17 seats. I hope the back room boys like Mark Arbib and Bill Shorten are pulled back into the same back room and given a wedgie. (I can't be sure, of course, that other voters have had qualms about Labor for the same reasons. There are some troglodytes even in an advanced Western democracy who oppose Gillard's leadership because of her gender, those who believe that an unmarried person without children cannot understand the problems of Australian families, and the religious right who oppose her for being an atheist and/or for "living in sin".) Still, I like to believe the Rudd factor was the most important.

At the time of Kevin Rudd's victory in 2007, the swing in Labor's favour was so great that psephologists called it a "two-election swing", which meant that the next election was Labor's to lose. And true enough, they lost it. I guess they could still crawl back into government by bribing two independents, but then it'd be official: Julia Gillard as Australia's first female lame-duck Prime Minister.

[See this hilarious Taiwanese spoof on the Australian election.]

Australia now follows the UK into the new era of hung parliaments and coalition governments. India moved into this era in 1989. 1984 was the last time the Indian electorate delivered an outright majority to a single political party. European democracies have seen coalition governments for decades. I think messy as they are, coalition governments more truly represent the views of a diverse society. They're complex and unwieldy, but ultimately fairer.

The Americans seem to have sidestepped the need for coalition governments by splitting the power of the State three ways - into an independently elected executive (the President), independently elected legislative bodies (the House of Representatives and the Senate) and a judiciary that although subject to appointments by the administration of the day, acts like a capacitor in an electrical circuit by slowly absorbing and discharging right- and left-wing constituents over the course of many administrations. Westminster-style democracies like Australia, the UK and India, in contrast, have the executive and legislative arms joined at the hip. The government is formed by the majority party in parliament. Hence the only way for the State to reflect the diversity of its polity is to elect a hung parliament with no single party gaining an outright majority. Coalition governments are then inevitable.

From a historical context, I think the world is therefore progressing. There is greater accommodation of diversity, and our democratic institutions are changing to reflect this.